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Meet the speakers: Ben Soppitt

In February of this year, the GSM Association announced the first results of its emerging markets handsets initiative. The Association had been working for some time with a group of operators in developing markets, brokering an agreement with Motorola to supply 6m handsets at an ex-factoy pricepoint below USD 40. As Director of Strategic Initiatives at the GSM Association, Ben has been a key archiect of this so-called ‘ultra low-cost’ programme.

The deal was seen as a major breakthrough in extending mobile telephony to markets which have previously been excluded by economic factors and is part of an ongoing project to build the economies of scale required to bring basic handset costs down to USD 25 per unit or lower.

Author

Marek Pawlowski is the founder of MEX. Since 1995, he has focused the MEX business on helping digital industries to develop better, more profitable products through improved understanding of user behaviour with mobile devices and wireless networks. MEX is best known for its events, research and consulting, which balance commercial, technical and user insights to define the future of mobile user experience.